Treat Huey was honoured Monday evening at the Mubadala Citi DC Open in recognition of his retirement from professional tennis. The eight-time ATP Tour doubles titlist’s career came to a close Saturday evening when he lost alongside Marcos Giron in qualifying at the ATP 500.
“It's definitely pretty emotional. Saturday night when we lost, coming off the court I had a tear or two. But yeah, it was something I absolutely enjoyed, and had the greatest time ever playing on Tour,” Huey said. “Growing up as a kid, I was like, ‘I’d love to be good enough to play this tournament one time’, and ended up playing it a couple times, winning it once. So it was an absolute dream come true.
“It was amazing I played for 14, 15 years, so I had an amazing time.”
Photo: ATP Tour
Huey, a Filipino from Washington who played college tennis at the University of Virginia, was joined on Stadium Court by several colleagues and staff members from the ATP Tour and the tournament, including tournament chairman Mark Ein.
“That's what I loved about being on the Tour, making a tonne of friends from all over the world and really enjoying that part of travelling together [to] different tournaments and experiencing different parts of the world and playing tennis everywhere,” Huey said. “Competing against everybody, you might not like each other here on the court sometimes, but we all understand it. So it's a good competitive sport.
“The people that I get along with we'll get along the rest of our lives. We'll definitely stay in touch.”
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Former World No. 1 Rajeev Ram, who is a year and a half older than Huey, has known the lefty since their junior days.
“He made the [Nitto] ATP Finals one year and obviously did pretty well at Wimbledon and won a bunch of titles out here,” Ram said. “So I think for someone to come out and have made a real impact on the Tour, especially representing the Philippines and making a great living out here playing, I thought it was an incredible achievement for him. I certainly wish him the best in the future.”
Among Huey’s accolades are his eight tour-level trophies, competing in the 2016 Nitto ATP Finals alongside Max Mirnyi, reaching the Wimbledon semi-finals with Mirnyi that same year and winning the Washington title in 2012 .
“Making year-end finals was probably the biggest. That was always one of my biggest goals even the first couple of years,” Huey said. “Once you get to the US Open and see the points race, see everybody going into it, I was always like God, I've always loved to be on that race on the board…
“To make it in 2016, it was a dream come true and everything I put all that hard work into doing and had a great year there and it worked out, so it was something that was absolutely incredible.”
Huey will take his experience to the college level as he serves as an assistant coach at the University of Virginia.
from Tennis - ATP World Tour https://ift.tt/wsgAXdR
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